Messages

Messages form part of the communications necessary to deliver the newspaper. The topic of the message can be anything from slippery road conditions, to a subscriber who wants the carrier to stop by to collect after 6 pm on Tuesday. Messages can be distributed in the following ways:

• Printed on bundle tops

• Printed on truck manifests

• Printed on the District Manager Report

• Broadcast to Customer and/or Route Service, and iServices Subscriber and/or Distribution.

• Displayed in Dispatching (so the dispatcher can relay the message to the service drivers)

A message may have a start and end date to limit its visibility to a certain time period. For example, you may want to broadcast a message during the period when there is a substitute carrier on a route.

Some messages are generated automatically by the system. For example, a message may be created if the subscriber’s route is being delivered by a new carrier (this can be useful when answering customer calls). Business Rules determine whether a message is created by the system when a new carrier is delivering a route and, if so, how many days it should be displayed. Business Rules also determine if subscriber messages are retained. If they are retained, a message transaction will be created for all messages that have Include Address selected, and can be viewed like any other subscriber transaction. If messages are not retained, they will be purged at the end of the publishing run(s) for which they are entered.

Adding Messages

You can enter messages only for publishing dates that have not yet been processed by transaction processing.

To enter a message:

• Click on the Messages tab and select Add or click the Messages button ().

  
• Define the contents and distribution of the message.

• If the message is broadcast and the selection type is “district”, “route”, “truck”, or “ZIP”, you can click the Deadline Override button to override the delivery deadlines of the routes involved. Deadline overrides can be entered only if the message start and end dates are the same (i.e., a one-day message). The deadline override will be in effect for the day of the message.

Field	Type	What to enter
Message Information
PRODUCT	setup	Select the product for which the message should be sent. The product could be a publication or a TM product.
START DATE, END DATE	date	Enter the date range during which this message should be distributed. You may leave End Date blank.
INCLUDE ADDRESS	yes/no	Indicate if the displayed name and address should be included with the message. This may be helpful if a customer has just called and you want to send a delivery message to a service driver. Include Address determines whether this is a subscriber-specific message, and other message fields will have different choices, based on how it is set. For example, in Selection Type, “Distribution Method” is only valid if Include Address is not selected, while “Cust Service” is only valid if it is selected.
SELECTION TYPE	predefined	Enter the distribution type for this message (CustService, distribution method, district, truck, trip, route, Zip Code or all). “CustService” is used for individual subscriber broadcast messages (the message is displayed only for that subscriber).
SELECTION	setup	Enter the specific truck, trip, district, route, district, delivery method or Zip code for which the message should appear. For example, if you entered “route” in Distribution Type, enter the route here. Enter “*” to select multiple entities. If the selection type is “Cust Service”, this field will be skipped.
MESSAGE	unlimited	Enter the text of the message.
Message Usage
PRINT ON	yes/no	Indicate if the message should appear on bundle tops, the District Manager Report and/or the Truck Manifest. Truck Manifest is active for data entry only if you enter a Distribution Type of “Truck” or “All”.
BROADCAST TO	yes/no	Indicate if this message should be broadcast to Customer Service, Route Service, iServices Subscriber and/or iServices Distribution.
DISPATCH	yes/no	Indicate if this message should appear in Dispatching so the dispatcher can forward it to service or shortage drivers.
Broadcast Time
START TIME, END TIME	time, AM/PM	If this is a broadcast message, you can set the exact time the message should be broadcast during the date range.

• Click OK to distribute the message.

• Add other messages or click Cancel to exit the Messages tab.

Finding Messages

You can locate previously entered messages by clicking Find on the Messages tab. Enter search criteria in the Message Information fields. Any messages that meet the criteria will be displayed.